Inside The Bills

It takes more than a year of bye weeks to call it a trend, but last season’s bye week proved very, very fruitful for Buffalo’s offense.

After being inconsistent from week to week with their offensive production through the first five games in 2010, the Bills exploded out of the bye week with a 34-point effort at Baltimore as Buffalo’s offense began to take on the identity we see in its full form this season. Buffalo’s offense has been wildly productive so far this season, but could such changes for the better be seen somewhere else with the club?

“I don’t know,” said head coach Chan Gailey. “I think that every year I go through a bye it’s different. You hope you’re rested. You hope that they’re mentally sharp and ready to make a run at this thing. The biggest thing is not to go crazy just because it’s an open week and give them too much where they can’t go out there and execute.”

Ryan Fitzpatrick, who was a big part of last year’s offensive explosion coming out of the bye has a lot of faith in Gailey and his coaching staff in terms of preparing for the next opponent, when there’s an extra week to examine them.

“I think just for Chan and for the staff to be able to sit back and evaluate what we’ve done, strengths and weaknesses, I think that’s the big part of it,” he said. “To give Chan and our guys more time to prepare, more time to look at film and to try to exploit some things. That’s a big deal. And I think you saw that last year and I think you saw that in how well we played in the Baltimore game. I think just giving extra time to evaluate ourselves as well as game plan is the big thing.”